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Apprehension about past and future international terror strikes likely will be the topic du jour Aug. 16 when 750 USC freshman discuss Janette Turner Hospital’s Due Preparations for the Plague as part of the First-Year Reading Experience.
“Janette has rightly put her finger on international terrorism as the plague of the 21st century,” said Don Greiner, the just-retired dean of undergraduate affairs who selected the book for this year’s reading. “She captures the masked fear of the civilian population in the face of this threat; more importantly, she affirms the humanity of society and its ability to go on.”
The novel, which won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award, focuses on the mystery of Flight 64 from Paris to New York and those who died on board. A survivor from the flight and the son of a passenger who died are caught up in the intrigue, which points a finger at sinister forces—perhaps the CIA or a government official at home or abroad—at work in the shadows.
Hospital was completing Due Preparations when the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks hit. She recast the end of the story, which now concludes one month prior to the September 2001 attacks. The book’s title comes from a line in the English writer Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, which recounts the 1665 outbreak of bubonic plague that killed 20 percent of London’s population.
“It reminds me of terrorism because it has these exact parallels that there is no way you can protect yourself, no matter what precautions you take, which was the case with the plague,” Hospital said in an interview last year with Eleanor Hall of ABC Radio in Australia. “You know, you could wall yourself up in a castle, but there ultimately was just no way to protect yourself.”
Students will find the novel “not as dense as Faulkner and his endlessly complex prose, but with myriad points of view,” Greiner said.
Hospital will present a lecture on the novel at 9 a.m. in the Russell House to the 750 freshman participants. The students will then break into groups of 10 for discussion led by faculty and staff.
This marks the fourth time the author of the selected First-Year Reading Experience novel has addressed students. Pat Conroy presented on The Water is Wide in the inaugural First-Year Reading. Ray Bradbury was interviewed on videotape for his lecture on Fahrenheit 451, and Josephine Humphreys spoke on her novel Rich In Love.
Thomas Cooper Library will mount an exhibit of first-edition copies of Hospital’s novels to coincide with the First-Year Reading Experience.
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